Solomon Islands turtle population sees record recovery

Transcript

A sea turtle rookery in Solomon Islands is showing the most dramatic recovery in turtle population ever recorded in the Pacific. 

The Hawksbill sea turtle rookery in the Arnavon Islands has seen a 200 percent increase in recovery after 150 years of excessive exploitation. 

Richard Hamilton is the Melanesian Program Director for the Nature Conservancy and the lead author on the PLOS one report which studied the rookery. 

He told Indira Moala the ongoing hunting for the shells of the turtles was the main cause for their near extinction.

RICHARD HAMILTON: It was actually one of the first commodities to come out of the Solomons. They were exporting Hawksbill turtle shell from about 1840. So from the 1840's onwards there were thousands of Hawksbills coming out of the Solomons each year. And we know from the archaeology and the ethnography that a lot of those are coming from out of the Arnavon islands and the manning straits.

INDIRA MOALA: What were the key findings of your study?

RH: The rookery is showing some very strong signs of recovery. The number of nests laid in any one year has increased by about 200 percent over the last 25 years. And the number of female turtles which are surviving to come back a second or third or fourth consecutive time to nest have also doubled.

IM: Were you surprised at the 200 percent increase in the recovery?

RH: Not so much surprised I guess because we already had an inclination that things had improved. It's just that we hadn't actually the data. I think what surprised me really more when we started to look into and research this story was the fact that, although there's been great recovery, if you look at in context to the historical picture, what we're really seeing is this severe decline over about 150 years. So we've seen good recovery but it's still not nearly as healthy as it was in the 1960's. But having said that, I think we shouldn't minimise the success of both long term community based conservation efforts and supporting policy because this is a species which globally is still listed as critically endangered and it's the only example we know of for recovering the species anywhere in the western pacific.

IM: Do you think you'd ever be able to reach the population that it had in the 1960's? and if so, how long do you think it would take?

RH: You know targets like the sixties are certainly achievable. I mean, the Arnavons are still a population which is quite heavily hunted for subsistence purposes. In a really well protected Hawksbill population, the number of experienced breeders in any one year will be very high. It'll be over 50 percent. And the Arnavons are still much lower than that. So it's still got a lot of recovery potential.

IM: Do you think that the Hawkbill sea turtles recovery in the Arnavons could be used as a future model for future turtle saving efforts in other parts of the region?

RH: Definitely. It needs a long term commitment. These things take time, these species. These turtles are very long lived. A lot of them are going to outlive us. And it also takes supporting national policy. There's no doubt, the world has it's fair share of environmental problems but there are certainly things we can do to address those and reverse those trends.